The Horror on the Rhine, E.D. Morel, Apr 1921

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PREFACE

The indictment contained in these pages of the policy pursued by the
French Government in investing their zone of the occupied area with
coloured troops and the description of the consequences of that policy
need no further elaboration by me. Mr. Morel has made a careful
investigation into all the relevant facts and circumstances, and states
the case without exaggeration and with convincing eloquence. If his
appeal fails to elicit a sympathetic response and an indignant protest it
will not be because those who read it remain unconvinced by his state-
ment of facts It will fail only in those cases where deep-rooted prejudice,
begot of war hatred, remains indifferent to any indignity or outrage per-
petrated against the German people.

I may, perhaps, emphasise three points : —

(i.) I have myself examined copies of the documents relative to the
specific cases he quotes. Apart from the fact that none of these cases are
even improbable, the date, time, place, names of witnesses, as well as
victims (given in each case), and the names of civil and military authorities,
French and German, to whose notice the incidents were brought, would
make it possible to trace each one and test it. But, as he rightly explains,
the force of his argument does not rest on the number of cases of rape, or
attempted rape, which can be produced, but on far larger grounds.

(ii.) There is no indictment here of the coloured troops themselves.
On the contrary, their cause for complaint is in some ways stronger than
that of the population among whom they are forced to reside. If Europe
is to become accustomed to the employment of coloured soldiers for
political purposes, there is a danger in store for the African populations

as well as the European, the full extent of which we can only faintly
realise.

(iii,) There is no indictment here against the French people. They
have been most deliberately and carefully kept in the dark by their
Government with regard to the facts. Their indignation, were they fully
enlightened, would be sufficient, I feel confident, to secure the abandon-
ment of this pernicious policy.

E. D. Morel has espoused the cause of African natives before to-day,

and by persistence he succeeded. May success attend his present effort on
behalf of the best interests of civilisation.

ARTHUR PONSONBY.
CONTENTS





Page

Preface By Arthur Ponsonby vee on 486 ss es 2

New Foreword By E. D. Morel... a oe a “4 4
Part I. First intimation of the presence of African troops in the

Occupying Force ... nm = x ae) AB

Part IL. Denials... aes ses as awe an Si 7

Part III. Burking the main issue 8

Part IV. The value of the denials ... es my ms we ®

Part V. With the gloves off mt i os o ate AY

(a) Brothels as Military Institutions rt

(6) Outrages upon women... a we ee

(c) A prolonged scandal #6 oe re «= 6

(d) Murderous assaults y - a ie

Part VI. A general process of debasement and degradation ... we 17

Part VII. Demoralising tendencies... a se oe a 19

Part VIII. Conclusion < 20

Some letters received by the Author ... B





AUTHOR'S NOTE TO EIGHTH EDITION:

Since the appearance of the Seventh Edition, the subject with which
this pamphlet deals has led to passionate controversy in the United
States. In so far as any of those taking part in it may be doing so
from motives of race prejudice, I much regret the fact: if fact it be.
There is no attack upon Africans in this pamphlet, as anyone can
see who reads Part IV. On the other hand, the excuses (and even the
denials of the presence of African troops on the Rhine) which have
been put forth in certain quarters in America are merely childish,
The problem assumes an additional gravity with the extension of
the French occupation. The Rhenish Women's League have issued
a further pamphlet as the result of investigations on the spot. It
makes sad reading, but does not add materially to our knowledge.
1 hear that a Swedish Commission has also been investigating the
facts. I note with appreciation an outspoken Editorial in the New York
Freeman, whom not the bitterest partisan would accuse of negrophobia.

April, 1921.




FOREWORD TO SEVENTH EDITION

By E. D. MOREL.

Although it has been found necessary to increase the price of this Pamphlet from
d, to 6d., its sale continues to be steady.

‘The action of the Rhineland Commission in prohibiting its circulation will
certainly not affect its sale,

The truth about this horrible business is permeating throughout the civilised
world.

Investigations recently undertaken on ihe spot by the representative of the
New York World have fully corroborated the accuracy of the facts here set forth,

‘A petition has been sent to the League of Nations on the subject, signed by the
Women's Social Welfare Societies of Holland.

Public meetings are being held in the United States where several organisations
are at work propagating the facts.

A Swedish officer well known in Stockholm. Colonel Petersen, has recently
published the result of his personal observations in the Aflonbladet of January 18,
‘After remarking that the “Conscience of the whole civilised world has been
outraged, and the reputation of France seriously damaged,” he describes his
experiences in Wiesbaden :

L have been in the position to see the misery caused by this policy, notably at
Wiesbaden. Under expert guidance I inspected the long row of houses of
which the windows were pasted over with paper (curtains were inadequate to
conceal what was going on behind the windows). ‘These houses are situated in
the immediate neighbourhood of the Wilhelistrasse which is the main artery of
Wiesbaden ..... In French garrison towns such houses are called “maisons
tolérées” (e.g., tolerated houses—brothels). Here they may rather be called
“maisons ordonnées" (e.g. enforced houses) for they have been established by
order of the French military authorities and are maintained at the expense of
the Municipality. I have unimpeachable data to prove this statement. Nothing
of the kind has ever been done in Germany before... .. During my visit I
had the opportunity of witnessing the mounting of the guard with accom-
paniments of much pomp and ceremony. First came the Military Bands
headed by a Frenchman ..... The musicians were not all pitch black.
Brown was the predominant colour, but many of them were as black as
Numidian boot-polish. To the strains of this Negro music, the French Band-
Master performed the ceremony of the mounting of the guard, which resembled
a military cotillion, the like of which I have never seen in any other quarter of
the globe. If the French think that such an exhibition enhances their own
self-importance, that is their affair. It assuredly produced a loathsome
impression upon us Scandinavians. In order to show the existing conditions I
will give one more instance. A prominent citizen belonging to a distinguished
patrician family in a town situated within the occupied area was for some reason
or other (and reasons are easily found nowadays) confined in a French
military prison guarded by Blac I wonder what the Swedish public would
say if our country were oceupied by a revengeful enemy and the Burgermeister
of Stockholm had been thrown into a military prison under the guard of
Dahomey Negroes or Khirgis. Then the Swedish people would perhaps realise
the shame of the outrage which the French are inflicting on a civilised kindred
nation.



Tt remains to be said that Dutch and German Editions of the pamphlet have
been issued, and that French and Italian Editions are probable in the near iuture.

The Author, February, 1921.




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THE HORROR ON THE RHINE

By E. D. MOREL.

Article 428 of the Treaty of Versailles provides that all German terri-
tory west of the Rhine, together with the bridge-heads on the right bank,
is to be occupied by the military forces of the Allies for a period of fifteen
years ‘as a guarantee ” for the Treaty’s execution.'

The French occupy the largest area of the territory affected—the
Palatinate. They have also established a military occupation in the Saar
Basin, whose coal mines are ceded to France under Article 45 of the
Treaty, although there is no provision for such in the Treaty.*

qs

¥VIRST INTIMATION OF THE PRESENCE OF AFRICAN
TROOPS IN THE OCCUPYING FORCE.

In March of the current year 11 became known to me that the French
Army of Occupation had included from the beginning of the occupation
large numbers—estimates varied between 30,000 and 40,000—of African
troops, from Algeria, Tunis, Morocco, Madagascar, and Western Africa.
This fact had been kept out of our Press. A certain number of outrages
committed by these African troops upon women and girls; the erection of
brothels for their use and other information of a like character also reached
ine, from private persons in Germany, from their relatives and friends in
England, and from correspondents in France and in neutral countries.

I first drew attention to the matter in a letter to the Nation
(March 27), laying empha-is not upon specific acts of outrage (‘‘ It does
not matter—I wrote—whether available reports are few or numerous”’),
but upon the fact itself, i.e., the presence of these African troops—many
of them conscripted among races in a primitive stage of civilisation—the
inevitable local effects which must accompany their presence, and the poli-
tical consequences both in Europe and in Africa which must eventu-
ally ensue.

Early in April the French moved further into Germany, They occu-
pied Frankfurt, Darmstadt, Offenbach, and other German towns on the
right bank of the Rhine (from which’ they have since withdrawn), and
they carried out that occupation very largely with African troops, moving



() The occupation may cease over certain areas under specified conditions at the
end of five years; in others at the end of ten years, if the clauses of the Treaty are
"faithfully carried out’? (Art. 429); but it canbe renewed, even after the expiration
of the fifteen yenrs, if Germany fails to observe even a part of her obligations under
the Troaty:(Art. 430). ‘The occupation will cease should Germany comply ‘ with all
the undertakings ” in the Treaty ‘before the expiration of fifteen years (Art, 431).

() The Treaty provides that the government of the territory shall be entrusted to a
Commission representing the League of Nations. Article 30 ‘stipulates that “only a
socal gendarmerie for the maintenance of order may be established.”

(°) In April last the total number of African troops in the Rhineland, the Saar, and
Frankfurt was reliably reported to consist of some 28,000 Moroccans and Algerians,
2.000 Malagasies, and 8,000 West and Central African negroes (the eo-alled
“ Senegalese.”)
them from the left to the right bank of the river. This fact they adver-
tised to the world, and it was only then that the general public became:
aware that French militarist policy towards an enemy defeated in war
included the quartering of African conscript levies upon that defeated
enemy in time of peace.

I thereupon went a step further, and published a comprehensive
indictment of the policy in the Daily Herald of April 10. This exposure:
was reproduced all over the world. It opened many mouths which had
hitherto remained closed, in quarters where the facts had long been known.
People plucked up sufficient courage in Germany to speak out. That they
had not done so before appears at first sight remarkable, and a word or two-
of explanation is necessary.

The attitude of mind prevailing in Germany in connection with this
and other matters arising out of the Versailles Treaty can only be under-
stood by those who realise the psychological conditions which prevail in
Germany. The character of the Versailles Treaty and the continuance of
the blockade during the Armistice coming on top of the general disaster
of the war have momentarily stunned the German people. They look upon:
the Treaty as a betrayal so stupendous and so overwhelming in its conse-
quences that they have sunk under it like a pole-axed ox, and the cruelty
of the prolonged blockade has induced in them something of the feeling
of a man who sees his last faith in humanity wither before his eyes. Mr.
Keynes, who is not a tender critic of the misdeeds of old Imperial Ger-
many, has done something to convey to his countrymen a notion of what
the ultimate judgment of history is likely to be on the Versailles Treaty.
He describes it as ‘‘ a breach of engagements and of international morality
comparable with their (the Germans) own offence in the invasion of
Belgium.’”’ But it is safe to say that the mass of the British people are
still ignorant to-day that their Government were parties to any breach
of international morality at all: so well has the truth been kept from
them by their newspapers. Many of us go further than Mr, Keynes.
Yielding to none in our condemnation of the invasion of Belgium, we
place it in the perspective which history will give to it—the ruthless open-
ing of a ruthless war in which Imperial Germany trampled upon human
rights on the plea of strategic necessity, as other Governments have done
and will continue to do as long as war lasts. That the action taken by the
rulers of Germany had long been foreseen and predicted by strategists and
writers* did not lessen its moral obliquity, but did invest the capital
made out of it by the Allied Governments with insincerity. But no plea of
strategic or political necessity in the face of a desperate national crisis can

(‘) A typical example:—The Zound Table, whose then editor has since acquired fame
as one of Mr. Lloyd George’s secretaries, publishod in its issue of June, 1913, an article
entitled ‘The Balkan War and the Balance of Power.” In the course of that article,
which is concerned with discussing the political and strategic moves in a war between tho
Central Powers and the Franco-Russian alliance, the writer says :—‘‘If, therefore, Ger-
tuany, wero to attack France across the frontier actually common to the two countries she
vould heve an almost impossible tas... . If the Germans consider that they cannot go
through, they would certainly try to get round ; and it is hardly likely that the rights
of smaller nationalities would be held sacred by either side if there was any advantage
to be gained by violating them.”

_ Alter examining the problem of a German advanco by way of Switzerland, and
Tejecting is owing to the danger, the writer goes on:—‘The violation of Belgium by
Germ iy, however, stands on a very different footing. It may be regarded as a prac
tical certainty in ‘the event of war. ... Indeed, there is a considerable body of
Belgian opinion which holds that in her own interests Belgium should treat all the
country south of the Sambre and the Maas as a sort of no man’s land, where the bigger
Powers can fight it out among themselves. Unable to protect herself unaided, w
wonder Belgium wishes to sit on the fence and side with the winner.”

6






be advanced in defence of tke Versailles outrage. That outrage was in-
flicted, in flat defiance of their plighted word, upon a defeated enemy which
had not surrendered unconditionally but on the agreed upon terms of a peace
based on President Wilson’s fourteen points, by victorious Governments
whose professions of exalted moral purpose had rung through the world
for five years, and who had explicitly pledged themselves to a Wilson peace
on the condition that, Germany accepted Armistice terms which rendered
her helpless in their hands. That experience, together with the main-
tenance of the blockade to compel Germany’s signature to the Treaty, i.e.,
the maintenance of a war weapon whose effect had been to double child
mortality and to slaughter some 800 people daily, has to a large
extent ‘broken the morale of Germany, and is accountable for
the fact that the presence of African troops in the Rhineland and the
reign of terror ensuing were passively endured until there came from out-
side Germany some indication that in this respect, at least, public protest
from within Germany might not prove altogether hopeless.

IL.

DENIALS.

But it was not only in Germany that the effect of the Daily Herald
arficle was felt. Meetings were held in England and in neutral countries.
The Swedish Premier referred to the matter in the Rigsdag. The branches
of the Women’s International League got moving. Fifty thousand
Swedish women signed a protest. Similar emphatic expressions of opinioa
were heard in Norway, Italy, and elsewhere. Notable protests were
uttered by responsible Frenchmen—by Romain Rolland, Henri Barbusse,
Jean Longuet, Paul Louis. Private representations were made to the
French Government. On July 14 the American Colony in Berlin held a
public meeting of protest, so largely attended that an overflow meeting
was necessary, and passed a resolution calling for the sympathy of
American women.*

The question now enters a new phase—with official denials, not, of
course, of the presence of these troops, or of the brothels forced upon
even the smallest towns by the French Command; but of specific outrages
upon women committed by them. The occupied regions are supervised by
a body known as the ‘‘ Inter-Allied Rhineland High Commission.’’ This
body appears to have investigated conditions. The French Government
has issued a statement to the effect that charges against the conduct of
the African troops have been grossly exaggerated by ‘‘ German publicists,’”
that action has been taken in regard to the few substantiated cases, and
that all the Allied representatives have signed a report to that effect.’ An
echo of these official statements was heard in' the House of Commons on
July 21 when, replying to a question put by Mr. Allen Parkinson (ie
Labour), Mr. Bonar Law said:—‘‘ The Inter-Allied Rhineland High
Commission recently pronounced a sentence of suspension for fifteen days
from June 16 as regards seven German publications, of which the two most



(*) Prince Max von Baden’s statement based upon the report of Professors Rubner,
‘Thomas, Zuntz, Moritz, Pflugge, and Hahn, in the New York Nation, December 20,
1919. The continuation of the ‘blockade during the five months of the Armistice is
reliably compnted to have killed outright 100,000 persons.

(*) A verbatim report of the speech delivered hy the writer mt the Central Hall.
Westminster, can be found in Foreign Affairs for May, and also in a pamphlet issued
by the British Branch of the Women’s International League

(?) The French Government issued a summons against Le Populaire, of Paris,
which M. Longuet edits, and which reproduced portions of the Daily Herald article.
But the threatened prosecution has not materialised. The French Government has
evidently thought better of the matter.

oe
important were the élnische Volkszeitung and the Rheinische Zeitung,
for articles attacking the French coloured troops.* The High Commission
are satisfied that the accusations made agaiust these troops are devoid of
any substantial foundation. Several of the newspapers which published
thesa charges having apologised, the period of suspension was reduced to
five days. The British representative on the High Commission has
reported in this sense.”

As to the conditions in which this inquiry was held, its character, the
witnesses interrogated, the ground it covered—and so on, we are told, of
course, nothing.

TL
BURKING THE MAIN ISSUE.

I have had a good deal of experience of this kind of thing, and some
practice in handling it. It will be at once observed that Mr. Bonar Law's
statement burks the main issue. It deals wholly with charges brought
against the conduct of African troops. The actions of individual members
of France’s African Army on the Rhine is not the main issue; but an
ancillary one. The indictment is not primarily against them. They, too,
are the victims of a policy. The indictment is against French militarism.

The indictment is against French militarism for conscript-
ing the peoples of Africa and thrusting tens of thousands of
African conscripts into the heart of Europe.

The indictment is against French militarism for quartering
tens of thousands of African troops upon European communi-
ties in time of peace.

The indictment is against French militarism for initiating a
policy which is bound to have demoralising effects in Europe.

The indictment is against French militarism for initiating a
policy which is bound to have incalculable evil consequences in
Africa and for Africa.

And from that indictment neither French militarism nor its apologists
in this country or elsewhere will be allowed to escape by a side door. ‘That
indictment will continue to be pressed home. It has got to be. We are
dealing here with a tremendous problem. The little men who are playing
with it will not be allowed to throw dust in the eyes of the world. A
European Power has determined to use the manhood of Africa—of all
Africa, even the most primitive regions of the Continent—for the pursuit
of Imperial ends in Europe and elsewhere. It has imported and is main-
taining on European soil an army of African mercenaries, which can bo
used as a handy instrument for its domestic as well as for its Imperial



(*) The facts as to the alleged apology are, I am informed, these:—The Kolnischer
Volkszeitung (Centrum' and the Pheinishe: eitung (Socialist) published, under the
duress described by Mr, Bonar Law with no sign of disapproval, statements to the
effect that some of the articles they had published were calculated to produce strained
relations between the population and the Army of Occupation. They have not
drawn their statements as to the acts of the African troops. Three of the Palatin
panera categorically refused to acquiesce in the order to repudiate the facts they had
published.






SU Fee NEUES aTe Seraree rec?

policy. The consequences of its action are not confined to the national
interests of the Power concerned. They are international, both in their
European and African aspects.

That is the main issue.

IV.

THE VALUE OF THE DENIALS.

But this denial, even in its limitations, is valueless. I am concerned
here mainly with the local effects incidental to the policy of the French
militarists. What is involved in our acceptance of this denial? We are
asked to believe that tens of thousands of African troops, men in the
prime of life, separated from their womenkind, can be permanently
stationed among a European population without deplorable social results
ensuing. We are incidentally invited to forget that the population among
which these African troops are stationed is a population beaten in a war
in which these African troops have been active participants; a population
upon which this occupation is inflicted despite its protests; a population
among which these African troops move as armed conquerors. Let us see
just what acceptance of these demands upon our credulity and thoughtless-
ness means—and for once let us set aside the national pharisaism, and
look things squarely and honestly in the face.

Tf this occupation were. not accompanied by deplorable social results
it would mean that the sexual requirements of tens of thousands
of Africans, living in an enforced state of celibacy, had (a) either mysteri-
ously disappeared or (2) could be satisfied with the services of professional
prostitutes. Will anyone outside a lunatic asylum uphold the first postu-
late? It has been suggested that to attribute strong sexual instincts to
the African, and especially to the African negro, is to do the African a
wrong. Why? In a letter which Sir Harry Johnston wrote to the
Women’s International League, he used as an argument deprecating what
he termed attacks upon French African troops, the fact that many of them
were Mohammedans. This fact merely reinforces the contention T
advance. Polygamy is the recognised social relationship in sexual matters
of the Mohammedan world. It is sanctioned by the Koran, which allows
four wives to the believer. Openly recognised polygamous unions sanc-
tioned by law, religion, and custom may be infinitely preferable as a
social institution to the unrecognised polygamy which prevails in nominally
monogamous Europe, or it may not. It may be the most decent and the
most racially preservative practice for Arabia and for Africa, or it may
not. But where are the wives of these polygamous African Mohammedans
whom French militarism has implanted among the population of western
Germany? They are in Africa! Will it be seriously maintained that the
sexual desire is less strong among polygamous Mohammedan Moors and
Arabs of North Africa than among the peoples of Western Europe? Will
anyone who knows anything of tropical and sub-tropical Africa, whose
tribes the French have been conscripting for the past eight years, contend
that sex does not play an immensely important part—and rightly—in the
sociology of that part of the world? The admission that it does implies no
reproach to the African negro in Africa. Nature opposes such obstacles
to man in tropical Africa that strong sex instinct is essential to racial
survival. If that strong sex instinct were non-existent, what between
Nature and the abominations of the old and the modern slave-trades, the
negro race would long ago have vanished from the face of the earth.
Again, and speaking generally, will it be denied that among the more

9
primitive—or the more natural, if that word be preferred—races inhabit-
ing the tropical and sub-tropical areas of Africa, the sex-impulse is a more
instinctive impulse, and precisely because it is so, a more spontaneous,
fiercer, less controllable impulse than among European peoples hedged in
by the complicated paraphernalia of convention and laws.

It is obvious, then, that the sexual requirements of the North and
West Central African troops which French militarism has thrust upon the
Rhineland must continue to exist, and that in the absence of their own
women-folk must be satisfied upon the bodies of white women. Assuming
these requirements to be fully met by professional prostitutes, the French
Government would still be responsible for introducing into Europe, and in
aggravated form, the seeds of racial hatred and racial prejudice which is so
disturbing a feature in the social conditions of the southern States of the
American Union. It would still be responsible for the after-effects of
that policy in European-administered Africa. I say in ‘‘ aggravated
form,’’ because in professional prostitution in the States the separation
of the races is maintained, and a white prostitute who has connection with
a black loses caste among her own class. But the habitual sexual connec-
tion between African troops and European professional women in Europe
is going to intensify—has already begun to do so—the complexities of
European administration in Africa in a hundred subtle ways. It will be
the African who will suffer primarily from the upshot of this. The Editors
of negro newspapers in the States who attack me would be far better
employed in an endeavour to visualise the political effects in Africa which
will certainly follow the sexual promiscuity between white and black in
Europe that the policy of French militarism has made inevitable. The
European is not going to clear out of Africa in our generation, at any rate,
and all influences tending to exacerbate the relations between the white
governing power in Africa and the black governed is going to be a bad
thing for the African—for the Negro especially. One might, too, be
pardoned for assuming that some sympathy might he aroused among these
gentlemen of the pen of African descent for men of their original race who
have been torn from their homes, separated for years from their kinsfolk,
subjugated to every kind of hardship, and used as mere cannon-fodder for
the benefit of French capitalistic militarism and imperialism in Europe, in
Syria or elsewhere.



But, apart from the evidence which I shall presently produce, is it
rational to suppose that the services of professional unfortunates do, or can,
suffice to satisfy the sexual appetites of the tens of thousands of African
troops scattered over the Palatinate and the Saar? Is it rational to suppose
that these powerful men, leading a more or less idle life, subjected, let it
de pointed out once more, to an enforced celibacy—although belonging, n
the main, to a race and to a society where polygamy is the recognised social
institution—moving freely and armed about the countryside among a
disarmed population which they have helped to defeat after five
bloody years of warfare, do not on numerous occasions yield to temptations
from which European occupying troops are certainly not exempt? Of
course it is not, and those who pretend otherwise are guilty of an hypocrisy
which has not even the merit of deceiving,





I desired to emphasise these general arguments before dealing with
tonerete facts, in order to make it clear that the case against the policy of
French militarism in the occupied regions of Germany is a case which does
not require to be buttressed with evidence as to its local concomitants in
order to be condemned by public opinion in every civilised country. It is
on the face of it a monstrous policy, Tf the women of the Rhineland are its

10


helpless victims so also are the Africans whom it couscripts. Indeed the
peoples of Europe and of Africa are all alike its victims, for it is keepin,
-alive the slumbering fires of hate in Europe as nothing else is doing, an:
it is kindling new fires in the relations of Europe with Africa. If we can
imagine what our feelings would be were the parts reversed, and if the
West Country, or South Wales, or the lowlands of Scotland were occupied
by African troops in German pay, with the prospect of fifteen years of such
an experience, while a Reparations Commission composed of our late enemies
were sitting in London squeezing every ounce of national wealth out of uz
and threatening us every few months with an extension of the occupation ;
if we can imagine these things, if we can picture to ourselves the psycho-
logical effect of this Black terror perpetually in our midst, the haunting
thought of the insecurity of our women folk as we went to our work in the
fields or in the factory, the knowledge that in the event of our working
classes striking against intolerable conditions of labour imposed by the
conditions of a Treaty forced upon us by our conquerors, these African
troops would be used to shoot them down; the affront of their continual
presence rubbing us on the raw in a thousand ways—if we can imagine these
things and their consequences upon us, then we may be able to form some
sort of idea of the passion of resentment which must be burning in the heart
and brain of every German of normal instincts.

V._WITH THE GLOVES OFF.

Aud now, since the French militarists and their accow plices are
persisting in their policy and deny its necessary and fatal accomp»niments, I
propose to take off the gloves and to describe the actual conditions prevailing
an the French area of occupation west of the Rhine.

A.—BROTHELS AS MILITARY INSTITUTIONS.

One of the inevitable factors in the permanent establishment of an
army of occupation in a foreign country is the brothel. Under the French
occupation the brothel ranks as a military institution. The French
Command is much concerned about this Institution, and has impressed upon
the civic authorities of the occupied areas the absolute essentiality of setting
aside houses in the towns for the purpose, especially in the case of African
troops. Many a small German town which never boasted a brothel has
been compelled to set one up. In the great majority of cases the civic
authorities of the town must pay for their upkeep—it is part of the cost of
the army of occupation, which is a first charge upon German revenues, and
which amounts to a fabulous figure. In some instances houses are selected
out of which the inhabitants must needs be bundled neck and crop. In
Ludwigshafen the inhabitants of the selected houses were turned out to live
in cubicles in the school gymnasium. At Landau three families, together
with the landlords of the selected houses, had to leave within three days.
At Saarbrucken the occupants had to clear out with twenty-four hours’
notice. The brothel at Landau has cost the Municipality up to April cf
this year 10,835 marks; the Municipality is also required to pay for the
weekly examination of the prostitutes—from 32 to 40 marks per week. At
Wiesbaden, where two brothels for French troops have existed for some
time at a cost of 41,000 marks, the French Command has now requisitioned
another for African troops in a public-house which has had to be set aside
by the Municipality. There is a brothel for African troops at Kreuznach.
Last month a brothel for African troops was demanded at Dietz—in this

ll
case the order is for the establishment of an “Arabic brothel.” At.
Saarbrucken the two houses commandeered for brothels are situate in a
prominent part of the town—a demand for a third was successfully opposed
by the clergy of all denominations and by the local medical association.
Last year the firewood which the Municipality had here collected during the
summer to help in the coal shortage was requisitioned to heat the brothel.
At Mainz the brothels for African troops cost the Municipality
70,000 marks. At Kostheim, where there is a large camp of African troops,
the brothel (into which some coloured women have been imported) costs the
Municipality 130,000 marks. At Bingen, where there is another brothel
for African troops, the cost to the Municipality is 40,000 marks. At
Hochst/a/M the brothels cost the town 29,000 marks. At Langen-
schwelbach the town is saved expense, as a contractor has taken on the job
of managing this military Institution.

Maximilian Harden, the famous Editor of the Zukunft, has recently
published a French Army Order setting out the regulations for the brothel
at Munchen-Gladbach (Gasthausstrasse 7). It has been reproduced in
other German papers and in Le Populaire of Paris. Here is an extract
from this document, which begins by explaining that “ owing to the shortage
of municipal funds ” no more than two women are available to “do the
work,” and that they complain of being overworked. So the Brigadier-
General who signs the order, moved by a desire to avoid the disorderly
scenes which he alleges to be taking place, elaborates a time-table :—

“Working days in the brothel.—All weekdays; on Sundays the house
is closed. Maximum limit.—Each woman receives daily ten men. :
Visiting hours from 5 p.m. to9 pam. . . . Scales of charges.—For a
quarter of an hour's visit (including entering and leaving), 5 marks. . . .
Distribution.—The six weekdays are apportioned as under: Monday, Ist
Battalion of Regiment 164; Tuesday, lst Battalion of Regiment 169;
Wednesday, 2nd Battalion of Regiment 164; Thursday, 2nd Battalion of
Regiment 169; Friday, 3rd Battalion of Regiment 164; Saturday, 3rd
Battalion of Regiment 169. . . . In each battalion there will be
delivered on the respective days twenty tickets by the Sergeant-Major, five
for each company. Men desirous of visiting the brothel must apply for the
ticket which will give them priority on that day.”






A\s already stated, several of the smaller towns occupied by the French
had not previously attained the height of civilisation exemplified in the
public brothel. A representative of the Rhenish Women's League, whom
I recently questioned at considerable length, pointed out that one of the
saddest and most demoralising features connected with these Institutions
was the effect upon young children of the sight of long files of African troops
waiting outside for their turn, The Mayor of a certain town in the
Palatinate who demurred when requested to set up a brothel was told that
hesitation on his part would render him liable to be brought before a
military court. THe was also informed that if a brothel was not established
“German women, girls and boys would suffer the unavoidable conse-
quences.” They do suffer the “ unavoidable consequences ” of French
militarist policy, brothels or no brothels, ag T shall now demonstrate.

B.—OUTRAGES UPON WOMEN.

___ For the general reasons already given the official denial of cases of
violence and outrage upon women and girls by African troops is bound to
be untrue. T have before me details of some eighty cases of rape and


Sonera enna

attempted rape. But if these recorded cases, consisting of depositions by
the victims before the civic authorities—their depositions being frequently
accompanied by the statements of witnesses and sometimes by magistrates’
reports and doctors’ certificates—were five times as numerous they would not
in themselves adequately portray the state of affairs prevailing in the
occupied area. It is in the very nature of these happenings that the victims
should be reluctant to report them. ‘To this natural reluctance many factors
in the general situation contribute. In the first place the occupied area 1s,
as it were, isolated from the rest of Germany. There is the censorship.
There is the passport system. There is the bullying of the local Press, so
disingenuously vouched for by Mr. Bonar Law. There is the general
disorganisation of civitian life produced by the occupation; the fears and
timidities engendered among the common people and among the civic
authorities themselves—Germany is presumably not free from. officials
inclined to take the line of least resistance, especially when a simple decree
of expulsion can put an end to activities regarded as pestilent by the French
Command. There is the general atmosphere of intimidation and insolence
which prevails; the feeling of helplessness which teaches that it is better
to be beaten with whips than chastised with scorpions, which teaches, too,
that protests are futile and attended by unpleasant consequences for the
plaintiff ; the lack of redress (°); the difficulty of identification ; the vista of
long years ahead with this burden to be borne. Add to this the capacity for
silent suffering which characterises a rural population everywhere, intensified
in this case by five years’ mental, moral and physical strain.

But from the abundant documentary evidence available it is not difficult
to form an accurate notion of the conditions. Danger lurks everywhere for
women and girls in the French area of occupation. Women are afraid to
walk alone after sunset. Strolling in the woods is no longer possible. Girls
doing agricultural work in the fields often need the protection of their
men-folk. Girls and boys are molested on their way to and from school.
The towns and villages and the roads leading to them are alike unsafe. In
ones and twos, sometimes in parties, big, stalwart men from warmer climes,
armed with sword-bayonets or knives, sometimes with revolvers, living
unnatural lives of restraint, their fierce passions hot within them, roam the
countryside. Woe to the girl returning to her village home, or on the way
to town with market produce, or at work alone hoeing in the fields. Dark
forms come leaping out from the shadows of the trees, appear unexpectedly
among the vines and grasses, rise from the corn where they have lair
concealed. Then—panic-stricken flight which often availeth mot. ;

Most of the cases I shall now epitomise are full of abundant detail ; tho
exact spot where the outrage occurred is usually stated with minute pre-
cision. So copious are the details that the documents recording them would
fill a volume. I suppress the name in every instance for reasons which he
preceding remarks will make plain. The description of the assailant, or
assailants, is in every case quoted from the deposition.

Reported from Frankfurt.—April, 1920 (doctor's deposition attached).
“ Black ” French soldier forces his way into a woman’s house, assaults her

(’) As an instance of the lack of redress, take the case of the girl student Maria
Schnur, of Heinitz, which occurred on December 20, 1918. This unfortunate girl,
daughter of foreman in the mines at Heinitz, was attacked by a French soldier on
the road between Elversberg and Friederichstat and mishandled so terribly that she
died a day or two afterwards in the hospital of Neunkirchen, whither she had been
conveyed. The case was taken out, of the hands of the public prosecutor at Saarbriicken
by ‘the request of the French military authorities. Full investigations were promised.

e judicial authorities of Saarbriicken have received no further information on the
case from that day to this—at least, not hy April, 1920. The facts leaked out, and
the victim's coffin was followed by a large concourse of people.







with extreme violence almost strangling her, drags her to the floor, sticks
a knife in it within reach of his hand while he rapes her. When she is
released she rushes from the house, and seeing a party of French soldiers,
complains. She is told in reply that her assailant has not been home for
two and a-half years, that these things must happen. One of the soldiers,
pointing to her fair hair, remarks that the Black soldiers are specially
partial to blondes.

Reported from Porz.—Easter, 1920. Attempted rape of a woman sf
sixty-five by a “ Coloured ” soldier.



Reported from Blsdorf.—May 15, 1920. Attempted rape of a woman
of thirty-five ; failure after desperate resistance; great violence used.

Reported from Urbach.—March, 1920. Two women and a young man,
the son of one of them, fetching wood in a cart; assaulted by four
“ Coloured ” soldiers ; girl escapes ; son holds his mother in his arms; their
cries attract attention and the soldiers make off.

Reported from Bensberg.—March, 1920. Watchmaker walking w.th
his wife; attacked by four “ Coloured ”’ soldiers, demanding that woman
should yield herself; both man and woman severely mauled; their cries
bring passers-by, and the soldiers move off without accomplishing their
purpose.



Reported from Kaiserlauten.—A batch of cases ranging from December,
1918, to May, 1920. Cases include two cases of indecent assault upon boys
aged seven and eleven respectively, in the latter case a medical examination
reveals that the victim has contracted syphilis ; and eight cases of attempted
rape by soldiers, variously designated-as ‘“ Coloured,” “ Moroccan” and
“Black.” ‘These attempted cases of rape include two accompanied by
housebreaking—one of them the virtual siege of an inn, in which a girl,
pursued by a“ Coloured” soldier, had taken refuge, by some thirty African
soldiers, until relieved by the ‘ French police.” In the six remaining
eases the assaults took place in the fields.

Reported from Trier.—Several cases, ranging from September, 1919,
to June, 1920. The cases include indecent assault upon a boy, accompanied
by serious laceration, by the '‘ Moroccan ’” servant of the French Captain
Laurent, billeted in the house (punishment promised) ; and a particularly
horrible case of rape, accompanied by robbery, of a servant girl aged’
twenty-one, in the neighbourhood of the barracks, by three ‘‘ Coloured’?
soldiers. Victim taken to hospital.

Reported from Mainz.--May, 1920. Working girl of nineteen seized
on the road to Wiesbaden by a “‘ Moroccan” soldier guarding a waggon-
shed. Raped with great violence after being threatened with bayonet.(’)





_. Reported from Karlsruhe.—Batch of cases, Tune, 1920. The cases
include the raping of a woman by two Black" soldiers. A man and
woman, on the way to Eneneheim, sprang upon by “ five or six Coloured





UY) In this case the documents inelude a letter fn
district. Tt reads as follows : “T hog to acknowledge
No. 324, dated May 5, on the snbjert of the rape perpetrated upon... ot
Weisenau. ‘This is admittedly the second time within a short. period that a similar
act of violence has been perpetrated upon German women. Such incidents are wholly
deplorable (De pareils faits sont parfaitement deplorables). I hava sent your report
to the General commanding the army on the Rhine. ‘The guilty party, whom it was
possible to diseover immediately, will he prosecuted, and cevtainly punished, with all
‘the necessary rigour." ‘This letter, which does credit to the writer, is significant
from many points of view. am

he French offices
& of your communication












FATA





















soldiers” hidden in the corn; man threatened with bayonet, woman
dragged into the cornfield avd raped by three of the soldiers, and robbed.
Two cases of attempted rape in the same neighbourhood.

Reported from Siegbury.—April, 1920. A girl and boy attacked by
four “ Coloured ”’ soldiers, girl dragged into the wood, and'raped. May.
—Two separate cases of attempted rape in the same neighbourhood by
three ‘‘ Coloured ’’ soldiers. In both cases the girls were threatened, with
a revolver and bayonet respectively. In both cases their cries attracted
attention, and the assailant made off without accomplishing his purpose.

Reported from Erbenkeim.—(In this case, the principal deposition is made
by the head of the local Police Force.) May, 1920.—Three girls, aged respec-
tively sixteen, fourteen, and fifteen, attacked by two ‘‘ Moroccans,” one of
the girls seized, dragged into a cornfield and raped, the others escape and
get help from the village, assailant seized by the villagers, and overpowered
after a furious resistance, in the course of which he tries to draw his sword
bayonet. ‘The Report says that, as a result of this and similar incidents
in the neighbourhood, women and girls refuse to work in the fields without.
male protection, as ‘ Moroccan” soldiers are always wandering about the
country side.

Reported from Julich.—February, 1920. A woman of thirty-four
attacked by three ‘‘ Coloured ’’ soldiers, several people attracted by her
cries for help ; soldiers made off without accomplishing their design, clothes
ripped and torn from girl’s body ; victim suffering from shock.



Reported from Ludwigshafen.—Batch of cases ranging from January
to May, 1920. Cases include the breaking into a house by a ‘“‘ Moroccan 7
soldier, and the rape of a woman of thirty-one, preceded by threats with a
razor. An attack upon a woman and girl working in the fields by four
“Black ”’ soldiers, the woman (aged fifty-nine), raped by all four soldiers,
the girl (aged fifteen), raped by two of them. An attempted rape of a
girl of sixteen by two “‘ Black’? soldiers ; girl esoapes, and takes refuge in
a neighbour's house, robbed of her wrist watch in the struggle. An
attempted rape of a girl, aged twenty-four, by two “ Black” soldiers, who
beat her with their belts, as she resiste interrupted before being able to
accomplish their purpose. And a terrible case, in which a young woman,
twenty years old, walking with her sweetheart, was set upon by a detach.
ment of ‘Black’? soldiers; the man, stunned with a blow and badly
wounded; the girl, dragged by the throat into a field, and successfully
raped by the whole detachment.



Reported from Enskirchen.—Batch of cases, ranging from January to
June, 1920. ‘The cases include: Attempted rape by a “‘ Native” soldier
of a girl of sixteen, walking on a country road; girl flung into a ditch,
treated with horrible violence, clothes torn to pieces. Attempted rape by
a “ Moroccan” soldier: Woman attacked on a bridge, clothes torn,
wounded in arm and breast by sword bayonet (medical evidence), rescued
by passer-by. Attempted rape of a girl of eighteen: Seized by the leader
of a“ Native”’ detachment coming along the road. Attempted rape of
a woman by a “ Moroccan” soldier, great violence used, three times dung
upon the ground, bruised throat and arm (medical evidence).

Reported from Wiesbaden.—Batch of cases ranging from October, 1919,
to January, 1920. Cases include attempted rape, accompanied by theft {
a gold brooch, by two “ Moroccans,” of a woman walking towards the town;
an attack upon a girl near the drill ground by “ Moroccan ” soldiers, who
attempted to drag her away, cries attracted attention, the soldiers then left

15
her, one striking her in the face with his fist and stunning her ; attempted
rape of a young woman by a “Coloured ”’ soldier, who sprang upon her
with an open knife in his hand, flung her to the ground, tore her under-
clothes to shreds and beat her on the head, assailant disturbed by passers-by,
and made off without accomplishing his purpose ; two other attempted rapes
by ‘‘ Moroccan ” soldiers.

Reported from Cologne.—Tune, 1920. ‘Two boys on the way to Husk
kirchen indecently assaulted by three “ Coloured ” ‘soldiers.

C.—_A PROLONGED SCANDAL.

Nearly all the cases epitomised above are of recent date. But there 1s
a goodly list of earlier ones recorded in 1919, including, among many others,
the rape by a “ Moroccan ” soldier of a woman of fifty-six returning from
a visit to her daughter at Andernach (medical evidence); the rape of a
woman on her way to Gersheim by a ‘ Madagascar ” soldier; the rape of
three young women returning from work in the fields by a party of
“ Coloured ” soldiers near Rodelheim; the rape of a young woman by two
“ Black ’’ soldiers near Ludwigshafen, assailants tore clothes from her body
and hit her over the head, rendering her unconscious; the rape of a woman
of seventy-three by a ‘‘ Brown” soldier on the road to Laumersheim ; the
rape of two girls by ‘‘ Coloured ” soldiers near Julich ; the rape of a girl near
‘Trier by two ‘ Moroccan ”’ soldiers, girl raped three times, had to go to
hospital ; attempted rape of the wife of the chief land assessor in a certain
town in the Palatinate (I withold the name of the town), etc., ete.

Indeed, the shame of this damnable business is aggravated by the fact
that it has been going on for more than a year. ‘The alleged situation in
the Saar valley as far back as last October may be estimated from the
following extracts from issues of the Mheinische Korrespondenz of that
month :—

The girl murders at Saarbriicken.—The terrible explanation of the disappearance
of numerous young girls in the Saar valley as now revealed is causing tremendous
excitement in the population. In spite of husbing up by the French military
authorities, who simply deny tho bestial deods perpetrated on German girls by their
Black soldiers, the conviction is gaining ground more and more that all the girls thus
far reported missing have been used in this abominable manner by the Black soldiers
in the Foch barracks (formerly Uhlan barracks) at Saarbritcken, and have afterwards
heen murdered in order to hide these crimes, and thrown into the manure pits. It is
now remembered that all these suddenly missing young girls were missed at Saar-
briicken, and that most of them had been near the Foch barracks shortly before their
disappearance. As the French Military Command of the Rhine Army have but lately
tried to represent their Black soldiers as “good-natured and gentle’ creatures," it is
now, of conrse, very difficult for them to admit theso ghastly girl mnrders. Just as
the many other murders which have taken place in the Saar district since its occupation
hy the French, so these latest murders will remain unpunished. Moreover, all persons
who report these cases or in any way endeavour to have them cleared up’ are heavily
punished.

‘The long list of young girls from the Saar district who were reported as missing
has been further added to by two cages of mere children. One is the fourteen-year-old
danghter of the miner Jacob Paul in Cuierscheid, the other the ten-year-old child of
the printer and publisher Pechner at Saarbriicken. Both children were well developed.
In the other parts of the territory occupied by the French, too, complaints are
increasing as to the disappearance of juvenile females











That the German Government has been making official representations
to the Allies from the first was made clear by Dr. Késter, then Foreign
Minister, in his speech in the Reichstag on May 20 last. In the course of
his speech Dr. Késter said: —‘“ The Government is grateful for the interpel-
lation, which gives it the opportunity to voice the anguish of the German










people on this subject. For mouths this incubus has weighed upon che
German people, and has now begun to arrest the attention of neutrals and
opponents. . . . The German Government is not inspired by racial
prejudice. . . . But we can say, without exaggerating, that the intro-
duction of nearly 50,000 coloured troops in the centre of white Europe is
acrime against the whole of Europe. . . . It isa moral crime, a moral
degradation, to place a people which for a year has been plundered
economically and nationally, under the domination of 50,000 Africans.
Apart from this, these troops are a terrible danger hygienically not only for
Germany, but for all Europe. ‘The ceaseless brutalities, the murder of
harmless citizens, the violation of women, girls and boys, the gigantic
increase in prostitution, the opening of numerous brothels, as well as the
rapid spread of sexual disease, all this represents a policy whch can only be
called a continuation of war with the most ruthless of weapons... \ the
result of which will be that the western parts of Germany will be pec-
manently infected. . . . The German Government has protested ever
since the armistice, but without avail. . . . Our brothers in the west
must be freed from this scourge. If they were not 6o exhausted, mentally
and physically, they would have defended themselves more energetically, and
the echo in the whole of Germany would have been stronger were our whole
‘people not so tired out.”

Needless to say the British people were not allowed to read this speech

D.—MURDEROUS ASSAULTS.

Cases of murderous assault are naturally less frequent. ‘Those of which
T have particulars occurred last year. They include murders of men and
women by “ Black ” soldiers, chiefly from the banks of the Rhine by shooting.
So numerous were these cases in the summer of last year that the organised
raftsmen of the Rhine and tributaries issued a public protest.



VI—A GENERAL PROCESS OF DEBASEM
AND DEGRADATION.

As J have already stated, these specifically recorded sexual outrages,
horrible as they are, cannot in themselves, taken alone, convey a full com-
prehension of the real state of affairs in the districts west of the Rhine
under French occupation. A general process of debasement and demorali-
sation is going on. Ib operates in a variety of directions. If the reader
has grasped the implications of the main fact, wuich I once more accentuate,
viz., the permanent presence in the Rhineland of an enforced celibate
army of conscripted, polygamous Africans, whose sexual needs must some-
how be met, he wil] understand that the French command is under an
obligation to provide for those needs, lest the men become uncontrollable,
and military discipline, which from all accounts appears lax enough as it
is(?) be wholly undermined. This, again, is a fact. The French Command



(!) Numerous aftrays between African troops and French gendarmerie have
appeared in the German newspapers from time to time. A French correspondent, re-
siding in Germany, writes me: “A friend of mine has recently returned from’ the
ccupied region of the Saar. He had the following significant experience, Several
Black soldiers, and two French soldiers, got into his carriage. The Blacks took the
available seats, leaving the Frenchmen standing. One of the latter said to my friend,
who had expressed his astonishment, “What can you expect? We cannot help it.
They helped usa good deal in the war. Now they think they are the masters, and
act accordingly.” My friend had subsequently a few words with the Black soldiers.
‘One of them said to him: “It is we who won the war. Without us the French would
never have got the best of the Germans.”

oa 17
is hardly to be blamed for recognising that, fact, and acting upon it. The
blame rests upon the shoulders of the politicians and the militarists who
have created the situation. The compulsory establishment of brothels is
the obvious, public admission of the fact by the French Command. But
the brothel is insufficient.

The various societies which deal with rescue and other similar work
for girls, in the Rhenish provinces, to the number of twenty-five, have now
banded themselves together into a League with the object of helping the
women and girls in the French occupied areas. The membership of these
societies runs into millions. The League is non-political and non-sectarian.
The French Command does not interfere directly with the work of these
societies, but, it is alleged, hampers them indirectly at every turn. No one
is allowed to prevent girls from having intercourse with the French troops.
The general allegation is that complaints by parents and guardians are
ignored, or, if pressed unduly, are twisted into a criticism of the Army of
Occupation, which is treated as a punishable offence. Indeed, it would
seem that any action taken with the object of protesting against the con-
dition of affairs existing, is represented as an ‘‘ attack upon the security of
the French Army.’’ Rescue work is naturally made extremely difficult
while this attitude prevails.



The French Command lives in a state of nervous tension, and is
always suspecting plots—which is hardly to be wondered at. Moreover,
there is: bitter annoyance at the failure which has so far attended the per-
sistent attempts to foster a feeling among the population in favour of
setting up a Rhenish Republic. Numerous are the ways in which rescue
work is subtly interfered with. Powerful subterranean influences are per-
eeived to be at work to prevent girls who have contracted sexual relations
with the soldiery from being removed from the influences surrounding
them. In one case it took five months to rescue a girl of sixteen from
a brothel. In the case of a girl of seventeen, who had been swept into ono
of these houses, every effort to remove her has failed up to the present.
The billeting of African troops in private houses is not an unusual prac-
tice, especially in the case of orderlies and servants. Much dread is felt
as to what may happen if autumn manceuvres are ordered, as in that event
the troops cannot, of course, be relegated to barracks, and the practice of
billeting in private houses will be largely extended. There is somethin;
like a house-famine in Germany, as there is in England, and the evil
attendant upon private billeting aro thereby intensified. School buildines
and private houses are requisitioned often in the most arbitrary fashion
T have details of several pitiful eases arising out of this practics of billet.
ing in private houses, the victim in one caso being a girl of fourteen. Ta
another case, which occurred at Mainz-Kostheim, a" Morocean ” eriminally
assaulted the woman in whose house he was billeted, in the absence of

er husband. When the husband returned home two hours later, he foant
his wife still unconscious (French medical report) Ene eoapteatas

Tt must also be borne mind that barracks are only availab
towns, and that many small villages in the Palatinate ar
African and French troops.

e in the larger
© occupied by

The spread of venereal disease is a necessai i

plague which French militarism has imported ints the Pritinte aod ee
Saar. Positive data on this subject is still lacking, at least as far as I am
concerned. That the hospitals are full to overflowing with these cases is
admitted. The worst account I have read of the spread of venereal disease

18




in the French oceupied area I have read in a French paper and I am unable
to control the source of the information. The Lokal Anzeiger (Berlin) of

(May 8 dast said :—



Many young German girls, some ot more than fourteen or fifteen, are brought to
‘Th

the hospital

instance, at Coblenz the Catholic Teachers’
have been taken over. The moral health of the Rhineland is being poisoned.

- . . This is equally true of Coblenz, Bonn and Treve:
hospitals no longer ‘suffice. Public’ buildin

Be



.. The
have had to be requisitioned. For
es building

minary and the State archiv



It is stated, with what truth I have been unable to discover, that a large
proportion of the African troops are syphilitic.

VIL—DEMORALISING TENDENCIES.

In addition to these various factors making for the corruption and degra-
dation of the population of the Rhineland, the effect of certain tendencies
must not be lost sight of. When an active agency for evil is imported into a
community—and the existence of an African army camped among a white
population must be regarded as an active evil—the bad elements within the
community respond. ‘There are bad parents and viciously disposed girls in
the Rhineland as everywhere else. ‘The bad parent’s opposition to the work
of the Rescue Societies is naturally strengthened by the attitude of the
French Command—the difficulty of arresting a girl's downward course is
proportionately increased. That is one tendency. Another arises from the
2conomic conditions. Owing to the state of the mark the African private
in the French Army of Occupation is in fact a wealthy man, relatively
speaking. His pay, in marks, exceeds the pay, in marks, of a German officer
of high rank, He stalks, a man of means, through a countryside whose
inhabitants are hit by the same cause which ministers to his opulence.
Poverty is probably the greatest of all incentives to prostitution the world
over. Speaking roughly, wages in Germany have increased by 500 per cent.,
while the cost of living has increased to over 1,600 per cent., and the price

of clothes is enormous.

And there is a third tendency—viz., the “ tone” of the French Com-
mand towards the population of the occupied area. The Berlin corre-

t

officers—men who behave as

spondent of Le Populaire, of Paris, has recently drawn attention to this in a
striking letter. There are, of course, individual exceptions among the
officers and gentlemen,” as the old saying
f has it. It would be strange, indeed, if France, which contains so many

chivalrous souls, counted none of these in the French Command. But the
policy dictated by the politicians and militarists in Paris inspires the general
“tone ”’ west of the Rhine. And the policy would appear to be deliberately
It finds expression in acts which, in
some cases, are almost unbelievable. Take the following incident, which was
recorded in the Neue Badischer Landeszeitung of May 29. Its accuracy is
certified by the Burgomaster of Caub in a communication (in response to an
inquiry), the original of which is in my possession. (The Burgomaster’s

directed to humiliate and to insult.

communication is dated June 7):—

“ On Friday, May 7, at 2 p.m., an officer and about thirty-five men of a
French Infantry Regiment, and a sailor, landed from Kostheim at the town
of Caub, district of St. Goarshausen, situated in the unoccupied territory.
The illegally-landed party assembled at the Blicher statue, and the officer
made a speech which obviously delighted the men. Tt ended in the invita-
tion to the men to sully the statue by urination. The officer preceded the

t



i men in this action. The incident drew a large crowd to the statue, and

it was only due to the sober and quiet attitude of two (German) sergeants
19
that the provocative action of the soldiers and their leader did not result in
bloedshed. The justified indignation of the public was answered by the
officer with threats with his loaded revolver and by gesticulating with his
riding whip. After the party had embarked in the motor-boat to re-crose
the Rhine this gentleman called back to the crowd, ‘ Zas de cochons!’ (Set
of pigs).”

Numerous occurrences exhibiting the same kind of spirit are reported.
“‘Many of these gentlemen,”’ writes an inhabitant of the Palatinate to an
English friend, ‘‘ have no more respect for a German than for a wild beast,
or less.’ The following incidents would appear to justify the statement.
They are among a batch communicated to a well-known British philanthro-
pic society by a German lady doctor, who received them from Princess
Marie zu Erbach, President of the German National Union of Friends of
Young Girls. Their accuracy is vouched for, but the places are not men-
tioned in the brief epitome forwarded :—

“A school teacher sent in a complaint, because his sister had been molested by
a Black soldier. Asked for the name of the assailant, he was, of course, unable to
ive it, Hoe was then told that anonymous complaints were insults to the French

Army. He was compelled to withdraw the complaint, and to apologise.” .
mother had forbidden her daughters to dance with French soldiers. As a punishment,
the woman had to sweep street for a fortnight, and the girls had to report
themselves daily.” . . . “A village was ocenpied ‘by troops. ‘The Commander,
afier having goo bis tooth, demanded the Mayor to procare him @ young. gir, for
the night”... ‘A young girl of the better class, returning with a girl friend
from a row on the river, where she had been annoyed by Frenchmen, disembarked
nean thirty to forty soldiers. One of these embraced her, and handled her in a
grossly objectionable manner. As she pushed im away, stones were thrown at her
yy the man’s comrades, At the tram terminus the soldier overtook her, and gave her
a severe blow on the ear, so that she fell against an adjoining garden railing. An
officer was looking, and laughed.” . . “In a small village, a young girl, who
unwittingly annoyed a Frenchman (the cause was quite trivial) was locked up for
shree hours in a dark hole of a pnmping-house. She shared her imprisonment with

@hree Moroccan prisoners and a Frenchman.”
Tt is natural that the African troops should take their cue from their

masters.
VIILE.—CONCLUSION.

Such is the hell created west of the Rhine by French militarism. I
have recently been informed from an unquestionable American source that
when the British and American representatives at Versailles became aware
that the French Military authorities intended using large numbers of
African troops in their particular zone of occupation, earnest efforts were
made to dissuade them from their contemplated step. It is a little late in
the day to try and shield French militarism from the shame attendant
upon its deeds.

A faint hope might have existed that publicity, combined with friendly
unofficial representations by third parties, the protests of prominent
Frenchmen and of neutrals, the discomfort of the British authorities (of
which the French Government has lad proofs) would havo sufficed to turn
French militarism from a course of action in the highest degree prejudicial
to France, condemned by French working-class opinion and by all decent-
minded people in France who know the facts. For no valid reason can
be urged in support of French policy in this respect. It is deliberate, cal-
culated, purposeful. The military requirements of France do not make
it necessary. Germany is helpless. She is virtually disarmed, In no
‘fuaster is it suggested that it would be possible for her within measurable
digisnes of time to raise and equip an army wherewith to fight even the

rench alone. Her own internal troubles are, moreover, notorious. The

on
French, on the other hand, are still armed to the teeth. They still have
a force of, I believe, some 600,000 men under arms. They have lent
hundreds of officers to the Poles. They have got military instructors in
Czecho-Slovakia, and, I understand, in Hungary. They have but recently
embarked upon an Imperialist war in Syria, in which they are using masses
of African troops. The militarist spirit was never stronger among the
ruling classes in France than it is at present. The French Labour Press
records continuous proofs of this.



i
I
|

But, since French militarism—contrary to the interests of the

French people—persists in its course of action in the occupied regions of

. Germany, then the shame of this thing shall be blazoned to the four

corners of the earth, and our people shall know that their own Govern-

ment cannot escape complicity in a policy which provides for a fifteen

years’ military occupation of German soil, in order to ‘‘ guarantee” the

execution of a Treaty which is literally impossible of being executed, and

which, in fact, is in constant process of being revised, although the word
“revision ’? must only be mentioned with bated breath.

I repeat once more that, given the fact of an occupation of German
territory in time of peace by African troops, conscripted by their white
masters irom the North African coast to the Congo forests for the purpose
of killing white men in Europe, in which task they have been engaged “or
five years, occurrences of the kind mentioned in this pamphlet, the brothel
system, the growth of prostitution, and the general debasement of the
population, were alike inevitable. And the politicians and the militarists
in Paris were perfectly well aware of it. The full details can never be
wholly known. The full effects of a gigantic evil of this kind do not become
immediately visible. They take years to disclose themselves. But the
real issue is not in the effects. Nor need the truth, or otherwise, of the
capacity of the French Command to control its African auxiliaries greatly
concern us. It is the cause; it is the fact itself which matters. That fact
constitutes an outrage upon Europe as a whole,

The appeal to the women of Europe and of the United States, to Inter-
| national Labour, to those who in every land are working for peace and
international reconstruction, should be irresistible.

The appeal to humanitarians, to societies, and to individuals who have
for years laboured for justice to the African, should be no less emphatic.
Here the issue is quite simple. Are the races of Africa to be militarily
enslaved, and, as an eventual result, is war to rage all over Africa in order
that the ambitions of European Imperialism in Europe, in Asia, and in

Africa may be fulfilled? (*) No irrelevancies should be allowed to obscure
this plain question.

(#) Up to July, 1918, according to the statement of the Colonial Minister in
the French Senate, the French Government had employed just under one million
Coloured men in the war—the vast majority of which were Africans, viz., 680,

: fighting men and 238,000 labourers. ‘The great bulk of the fighting men were Africans.

f To this total must be added the units recruited later in the year in French Equatorial
Africa numbering 15,000. Of the fighting men, French West Africa and French
Equatorial Africa (French Congo) furnished 181,152, Algeria, Morocco, Tunis, Mada-
gascar, the French Somali Coast, the French West Indies and French Cochin-China
produced the remainder. Recent decrees apply conscription to the whole of French
tropical and sub-tropical Africa an area as Tange as, Rurope. The French military
authorities reckon that thie will produce a permanent Negro Army of 100,000 men,
and estimate a further 100,000 from Madagascar, the French West Indies, and the
French Somali Coast—mainly Negroes in each case. These African conscripts are to
serve three years, two out of which are to be epent in France—read, Europe. These
figures do not take into account the contingents raised in Morocco, Algeria, and Tunis
—mainly Berbers (Moors) and Arabs. It is stated in the book, “Martyred Tunis”

7 a1
To the people of Britain the appeal is direct, precise and dual in
character, As a governing Power in Africa the French policy of con-
scripting African manhood faces us with two alternatives, that of ulti-
mately conscripting the peoples of our African colonies and dependencies ;
or running the risk of having our own territories invaded, sooner or later,
by masses of African levies in revolt against the slender chain of an allegiance
which can be snapped at any moment. Lither alternative involves
bloodshed and profound disturbance, an undoing of the work of years—
perhaps irremediable d‘saster. As a world-power, whose continental foreign
policy largely determir.es the national destinies, we are confronted by two
alternatives: the creasion of a real League of Nations; or military alliance
with one or more Continental Powers. The first alternative would mean
for our people a long period of peace—perhaps a stabilisation of peace
conditions, or at least of anti-war conditions. But a real League of Nations
is impossible while France wage: war upon Western Germany with African
troops. The other alternative involves certain war. Let the facts be
faced. A democratic, a Socialis: France would mean a peaceful France,
ready to co-operate in building a real League of Nations. The present
militarist and imperialiss France has no more use for a real League of
Nations than have the militarist and imperialist influences in Great
Britain. The France of to-day may not be, let us hope will not be, the
France of to-morrow. But the policy of the France of to-day is a military
alliance with Britain, America and Belgium, against the Germany of to-
morrow, which French militarism is goading into a fury of revengeful
emotion. America will have none of this alliance. If Belgium chooses
to rush upon her ruin that is her look-out. But the question for us is:
Are our infant sons to be doomed to a violent and senseless death in
manhood because French militarism is sowing the seeds of ineradicable
hatreds in Europe? Are we to reap the crops? Are we, presently, to
sufler once again because German boys are being told to-day: ‘‘ They
obtained our surrender under false pretences. They promised us an
honourable peace. We laid down our arms. When we were helpless they
forced us to sign a Treaty which condemned us to death-in-life. They
went on starving us for months and months. They stole our territory.
They seized our colonies. They filched our coal and iron. They laid
hands upon the property of our citizens abroad. They piled humiliation
upon humiliation on us. All this they did. These things we can forget,
though hardly. But that was not enough. They inflicted upon us the
supreme outrage. From the plains and forests, from the valleys and the
swamps of Africa they brought tens of thousands of savage men, and
thrust them upon us. Boys, tiese men raped your mothers and sisters !
This, neither you, nor we, nor they, must ever be allowed to forget.”

(La Tunisie martyre), published in Paris this year (Jouve et Cie: 15, rue Racine)
that 65,000 conscripted ‘Tunisians were sent to the Western Front during the war,
45,000 of whom were killed and wounded ; a further 30,000 were conscripted and sent
to France as labourers—‘ thonsands”” of them died of disease. The book is a fierce
protest against the French treatment of the Tunisians. The process of conscripting
the Negro levies in French West Africa has led to extensive bloodshed, and vast
disturbance. The full facts have been concealed from the French public. But the
French Governor-General threw up his post in protest against a policy which he
declined to carry out, and which, he said, caused the Native people to declare
that the Slave Trade ‘had been revived.












SOME LETTERS RECEIVED BY THE AUTHOR OF THIS
PAMPHLET.

From Grorce Branpes.
I desire to associate myself in the fullest way with your protest.

From Henri Barsusss.

I am heartily with you in your protest against the use of black troops. Your
action does not surprise me. You were subjected to abuse, and you incurred honour,
in denouncing the abominable outrages committed upon the humble inhabitants of the
Dark Continent. It is natural that you should protest against the inhuman tasks to
which they are being set to-day. Moreover, the fact that from martyrs they should
have become executioners does not affect the irresponsibility of these primitive beings
whom civilisation uses merely as instruments. The hordes who to-day are poured over
German towns are precisely whab they were yesterday—unhappy slaves, in whose
primitive minds the scientific European has, for his own purposes, rekindled the taste
and the idea of degradation, rape, and murder.

We know the methods adopted to fetch them out of their own country. We
Imow how they have been torn from their natural life by armed raide and incendiary
fires, to be carried off into captivity and thrust into barracks, to be slaughtered by
being used in attacks made in open country where masses of them perish, to die of
cold and of diseases, which they did the more easily since their suffering awakened
no echoes and they themselves hardly knew how to explain their troubles.

How many—while I was at the front—have I not seen die of consumption, exhaus-
tion, and melancholy, poisoned by our northern fogs, collapsing little by little like
mere things, deprived of that southern sun which they needed.

On the Riviera, where the rich enjoy all the subtleties of Iuxury and live princely
lives, I have seen these unhappy blacks herded like animals in a pen. The arms of
many were marked by weals from the ropes with which they had been tied to bring
them from their country and to prevent them, once landed in Europe, from running
away. Many of them committed suicide from wretchedness and through pining for
their own land.



All this has not prevented the pernicious Jingo Press from exalting the heroism
of the traders in black flesh, whose energies had secured this additional number of
soldiers for the home country, or from lavishing praise upon the clever manq@uvres
hich enabled us to benefit fom the sscrifice of the black troops.

These lyrical outpourings appear to me to resemble the odes to the dead, because
the primitive men whom civilisation allows to be brought over in shiploads are hardly
lese capable of protesting and defending their poor cause than those who perished on
the field of battle.

For all tliese reasons, my comrades of the war and I protest once more against
the barbarism and the duplicity of the men who rule us, and we add that the policy
you denounce, a policy disastrous for the native races and on which France has
embarked, tends to induce all the other nations more or less, and in so far as they
are able, also to make use of black human cannon-fodder.

It_may be that British jingoism will interpret your justified and noble protest in
the light of a special attack upon France. We are familiar with the procedure which
consists in framing a great question in an incidental and secondary one in order by
underhand methods to fight it the more effectively. But all this will not prevent
you once again from winning through.

From Jean Loncver (of the French Socialist Party and Editor of
Le Populaire).

I bog you to inform our British comrades at the Central Hall that we are abso-
lutely at one with them in their protest against the crime of employing black troops
in the occupied provinces on the left and right banks of the Rhine. It is one of the
most odious aspects of contemporary militarism and imperialism. Just as we are at
one with you in protesting against outrages in India, in Egypt, and now in Ireland
for which your governing classes are responsible, so do we entirely approve of your

23
protest against the use of African or Asiatic troops for the occupation of European
cities. The occupation by these troops of the house where Goethe was born is a
symbol which has painfully affected tho whole of thinking Europe and all those who
in France desire to remain faithful to the noblest and most glorious traditions of our
country. But beyond this our working class population realises that it is confronted
with a danger aifecting it particularly. To-morrow these Moroccan and Senegalese
troops will be employed against French Labour and when French Labour demands
its rights. And that is why I desire, on behalf of our friends of the French Socialist
Party, to proclaim in the most emphatic manner that your action can in no way
whatsoever be considered as anti-French. On the contrary, the best way in which
you can show that you remain attached to the most noble traditions of the France of
Voltaire, Victor Hugo, Michelet, and Jean Jaurés is to protest as you are doing
against the outrage inflicted upon our country by our Government.

From Gsnerat C. B, Tuosson, C.B.E., D.S.0. (British Military Repre-
sentative on the Supreme War Council at Versailles, May, 1918-June,
1919).

I have read you letter in to-day's Daily Herald with great interest, and share to
the full your horror and disgust at the employment of black French troops in
Germany. Having had some experience of the West Coast of Africa, I can confirm
what you say as to the sexual proclivities of these men, to whom, in default of women
of their own race, intercourse with European women is a necessity which has to be
met. The contamination is mutual, both from a physical and moral point of view
and, in pre-war days, formed one of the worst features of Military Tournaments and
Coronation Reviews in which coloured troops took part.

There is another side to this question, which, though not so physically revolting,
is even more serious—savages are being ‘trained to the use of arms and taught to
despise the European races, at one and the same time. Their worst qualities are
being stimulated, and they will return to their native lands restless, dissatisfied, ripe
for any mischief, and the ready tools of those who wish to stir up strife. France is, in
fact, engaged in militarising Western Africa. The consequences will be incalculable
and’ uncontrollable, they will first be fe't in the French African colonies, but will
extend and creep over the whole continent of Africa,



This suicidal policy ie the work of a small clique of reactionaries and militarists
who serve the interests of industrial magnates. Ever since the signing of the
Armistice, both the French and British Governments have submitted to dictation by
these men, and until they are reduced to impotence no remedy will be found.

The publicity you are giving to these atrocious happenings in Germany will, it
is to be hoped, rouse an apathetic public to sane realisation of the iniquities sanctioned
by the Peace Treaties and also of the total incapacity of the men who made those
Treaties to deal with modern problems either at home or abroad.

By your plucky action in exposing these horrors you are, in my opinion, rendering
a great public service, and that success will attend your efforts must be the wish of
every honest man.

From Fasrizio Marr, Craunio Treves, Enrico Ferri, and Francesco
Crccorts (Socialist Deputies in the Italian Parliament).

The employment of coloured troops in the crushing of the peoples that were
defeated by famine is an episode both instructive and symbolical. We are filled with
loathing at the shamelessness againet which you protest.

From Gernenat Manazzt (President of the Roman Branch of the Italian
‘Association for Popular Control).

We protest emphatically against the occupation of German cities by coloured
troops.

From Prince Max von Bavey.

I fail to understand the attitude of mind which hesitates to speak out on this
subject, for the wrong done to the black troops is not less than the wrong done to
the German people.

oa